Haloti Ngata avoids serious injury

There’s no way that anything could suppress the joy that comes with winning the Super Bowl, but a serious injury to a key player in the game would come closer than just about anything else.

It’s a good thing that defensive tackle Haloti Ngata didn’t suffer a serious injury against the 49ers, then. Ngata was forced out of the 34-31 win with a knee injury and he had an MRI on the knee Thursday even though initial reports were that he only sprained his MCL. John Harbaugh relayed the results of that MRI on Thursday and confirmed that Ngata avoided a serious injury.

“Nothing serious with Haloti,” Harbaugh said, via the team’s website. “There are some things in there we’ll just have to see. It won’t be anything that should keep him out of training camp or anything like that.”

Watching the 49ers run the ball after Ngata’s injury was a reminder of how important he is to the Ravens defense. Should Ed Reed follow Ray Lewis out the door in Baltimore, Ngata will join Terrell Suggs as the veteran leaders of the defense next season. That makes it all the better that there doesn’t seem to be much chance that Ngata will be leading from anywhere but the field.

4 responses to “Haloti Ngata avoids serious injury”

Lewis and Reed aside, this D still boasts probowl players in Suggs and Ngata, top 5 CB Webb, the punishing Pollard, and rising stars in Ellerbe (who will return) and Art Jones. Add in a full season to start for Upshaw (sorry folks Kruger is gone) the return of McClain at ILB and Corey Graham continuing to play hot as starting CB (see ya Cary!) this D will be just fine.

if it was only a sprained mcl why didn’t he return to the game? according to the experts on here this being a championship game shouldn’t he have sucked it up and got back out there? oh wait you only expect a certain qb to do that right?

Everybody credited the power outage for the 49er’s comeback, but I still think it was the loss of Ngata that made all the difference. Had the injury occurred one quarter earlier, it could easily be San Francisco celebrating right now.